The Democratic Party candidate, Scott Colom, has prevailed in the contest for the United States Senate seat in the state of Mississippi, by narrowly defeating the outgoing Republican senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith, in the context of the midterm elections held last November 3, according to the projection released by the U.S. network CNN.
With 99% of the votes already counted, Colom has taken the victory after adding 473,336 ballots, equivalent to 49.2% of the votes cast. His main rival, the Republican Hyde-Smith, has finished in second place with 468,667 votes (48.7%), separated by just a few 4,700 supporters.
This result represents a major shift in Mississippi, a territory traditionally Republican in which Democrats had gone more than 40 years without winning a Senate seat. Colom’s success adds to the party’s solid performance in these midterm elections, in which it has managed to consolidate control of both chambers of Congress.
In the Senate, only the battle in the state of Alaska remains pending -- which pits the Democrat Mary Peltola against the Republican Dan Sullivan --, which for now yields a distribution of 55 seats for the Democrats (eight of them won from the Republicans) versus 44 for the conservatives.
Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, around a fortnight of seats are still pending to be assigned a week after the election, although the Democratic bloc also has the majority secured with 257 congresspeople versus 169 from the Republican Party.